Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on the Brothers Diaz, Gina Carano, Jake Shields and more

In this week’s Twitter Mailbag we take a long, hard look at the UFC’s current dispute with Nick and Nate Diaz, and wonder what it all means for an organization that’s starving for marketable talent at the same time that it struggles with the question of whether popularity trumps actual physical talent.

Money. That’s why. Nick Diaz and Nate Diaz both seem to want more of it than the UFC is willing to give them, and until they get it they don’t seem to mind sitting on the sidelines taking their shots at the UFC. It’s almost as if getting into business with two dudes who are known for giving so few [fudges] has some potential drawbacks.

But let’s talk about the situation with the Brothers Diaz for a minute here, since I think it offers an interesting insight into where the UFC is right now. Start with Nate. He’s reportedly making $60,000 to show and another $60,000 to win, which is “pretty damn good money” if you fight (and win) three times a year, according to UFC president Dana White. Of course, you probably couldn’t get White to give up his seat at the blackjack table for 60 grand. Whether he thinks Diaz the younger was being offered a good deal or not is irrelevant. It only matters whether the dude who stands to get his skull beat in thinks it’s worth it, and clearly he doesn’t.

That brings us to Nick Diaz, who insists he won’t come out of retirement for anything less than $500,000. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Diaz has told us for years that he doesn’t love fighting and will only take the risks if the money is right. It’s kind of refreshing to see him sticking to that now that he has some cash, and it’s not like he’s asking for a ridiculous sum. Half a million dollars? James Toney made that just to embarrass himself against Randy Couture at UFC 118. Either leave Diaz alone, or pay that man his money.

And see, that’s the thing, is that the UFC doesn’t want to leave the Diaz boys alone. As you pointed out, it could sure use them right about now. That’s why, even if they might not seem like expert negotiators, the Diaz brothers have picked a pretty good time to up their price tags. The UFC needs box office draws. Why else would it seriously consider giving an immediate title shot to an actress who hasn’t fought in almost five years? You can bet she’s not coming back for 60 and 60.

Short answer: Because he’s fascinating and we don’t have a whole lot else going on. Slightly longer answer: Because we still remember that Paul Daley fight like it was yesterday, because it was maybe the best one-round fight in MMA history. But you make a good point, Senator. On paper, Diaz doesn’t look so hot these days. If Jake Shields was cut for, according to White, being “on the downswing” after going 2-1 in his last three, why is the UFC still courting Diaz, who’s 1-2 with failed title shots against two different opponents? It’s because we’re still talking about him, which, coupled with the Shields release, really tells you something about this business.

We like to pretend that MMA is a sport, in the traditional sense. It’s not. True, it’s an unscripted athletic competition, but it’s also a damn carnival. It’s about getting paying customers into the tent. Diaz does that. Shields doesn’t.

The problem for the UFC is that it wants it both ways. When a guy like Nate Diaz complains about money, it points to his losses as proof that doesn’t deserve it. But when it thinks it can profit from certain fighters, suddenly wins and losses don’t mean so much. As with White’s recent claim that the UFC is a $3.5 billion company, the truth is that you’re worth whatever you can convince someone to pay you. Diaz clearly knows that. He also knows that the UFC doesn’t have many other fighters at the moment who fans are so fascinated by in victory or defeat.

@benfowlkesMMA As a fight fan, should I care that Jake Shields got released? Or is my indifference justified? #TMB

I guess it depends what you want out of the sport. If you just want to be entertained on a Saturday night, and if you agree that Jake Shields wasn’t providing that entertainment, then hey, who cares if he’s not around to suck the air out of an arena with his three-round snoozefests anymore? But if you care about the integrity of the sport, particularly in the proving-ground-of-martial-arts sense of the phrase, then yes, you should probably see firings like this as a disturbing trend. This is how the UFC contributes to a reshaping of the sport, by rewarding (or penalizing) certain styles over others, rather than letting the marketplace of violence sort itself out.

We could argue, as my podcast co-host Chad Dundas and I did this week, about whether that’s the UFC giving us what we want or telling us what we want, but what really matters is what, if anything, we’re prepared to do about it. Because it’s one thing to wave goodbye to Shields, who at least got his chance in the UFC, including a title shot. But if you really want to do some fight fan soul-searching, ask yourself why you aren’t more pissed off that Ben Askren has been essentially blacklisted without ever losing a fight.

@benfowlkesMMA With Jake Shields back on the market, which organization is better for A) relevancy in the division; & B) brand marketing?

If you want to be a relevant welterweight outside the UFC, you’ve got to go to where the relevant welterweights outside the UFC are. Right now, that’s WSOF. You’ve got fighters like Rousimar Palhares, Jon Fitch, and Josh Burkman over there, and wins over any of those dudes would mean something.

Then again, from a “brand marketing” perspective, it’s entirely possible that Shields could become just one more UFC refugee washing up on the WSOF shores. He won’t really stand out there. Not the way he might with Bellator or even ONE FC, where at least he could get his grapple on against Askren. Trouble with that is, if Bellator was into guys like Shields it probably wouldn’t have let Askren walk in the first place (speaking of promoters reshaping the landscape of the sport), and even if he beat Askren in ONE FC, then what? The process of elimination leaves us with WSOF, I suppose. That is, assuming it’s financially willing and able to support one more UFC castoff, which is another concern entirely.

@benfowlkesMMA The UFC returns from a two week break. Is that supposed to make me feel excited for FN 39? Cause I'm just not feeling it #TMB

You mean you’re not planning to call in sick to work just so you can watch a third-tier UFC event at 2 p.m. ET on a Friday afternoon? Color me shocked. Two-week break or no, I don’t blame you for not feeling pumped about this card. There’s not a whole lot going on here. You’ve got Roy Nelson and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira fighting to see who is all the way done and who is only mostly done. You’ve got Clay Guida and Tatsuya Kawajiri fighting for stakes that are not so dissimilar from the ones in the main event. After that it’s a series of prelim fighters going at each other, though the distinction hardly matters on a Fight Pass event, since the whole thing streams over the Internet anyway.

So yeah, not a spectacular lineup, but what did you expect? It’s a Fight Pass event. Most people in North America will be at work when it airs live, but you can always go back and check out the high points later, once the Internet has told you what’s worth your time and what isn’t.

@benfowlkesMMA What do you think of Pat Barry's 500$ offer to anyone that can KO him in sparring? What could possibly be the motive?

One of the guys I do jiu-jitsu with recently issued a standing offer of a six-pack of local microbrew to any lower belt who could submit him with a triangle choke. His motive was to get people to actually attempt a move we’d spent a lot of time drilling, while also forcing himself to get better at defending it. I don’t know if Pat Barry was trying something similar by offering sparring partners $500 if they could knock him out, but stuff like that does up the stakes at practice, which in turn cranks up the intensity to something that more closely resembles an actual fight.

Still, seems like it’d be a real bummer to wake up on the practice floor knowing you’ve probably got a concussion and you’re now 500 bucks poorer. But, at least in my friend’s case, that beer is still sitting in his fridge, and may stay there for a while.

@benfowlkesMMA Is "Promoter logic" the ONLY reason DW is talking to Carano? You know "If it makes money it makes sense".

It sure doesn’t make any other form of sense. Gina Carano is a featherweight who hasn’t fought in nearly five years, and the last time she did fight she got beat up by a woman who the UFC president says he’s not even interested in talking to now. White and UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey both insist that Carano deserves an immediate title shot because of her work as a pioneer for women’s MMA. While it’s true that she helped put the female side of the sport on the map, she also bolted for Hollywood the first chance she got. She didn’t seem terribly worried about the fate of WMMA when she did it, either, so why does the sport owe her something now?

Seems like the UFC is trying to talk itself into this one solely because it thinks people will buy it. In that sense, the UFC might think it’s giving fans what they want. If that were the case though, it probably wouldn’t have to spend so much time and energy justifying it before anything has even been announced.

@benfowlkesMMA do you think if Justino had a face like Carano there would be a 145 division in the ufc?

It’s funny how “digital [blank]” is becoming shorthand for ‘significantly crappier than actual [blank].’ First we had UFC sponsor Metro PCS trying to offer “digital autographs” from fighters, and now this “digital staredown” between Renan Barao and T.J. Dillashaw. It’s one of those rare bad ideas that proves to be even worse in practice than it was in theory. Hopefully that’s the last we see of it, since nothing tells fans that they shouldn’t bother caring about a fight quite like a promoter who can’t be bothered to get them in the same room in order to sell it.

@benfowlkesMMA @MMAjunkie Fighters are firing back at the @UFC. Are these just bitter employees or victims that should be taken seriously?

I don’t think you can call any professional athlete who signs a contract a victim. Don’t like the financial terms of the offer? Don’t sign it. Even if you do sign an eight-fight deal (which, as has been pointed out in the past, commits a fighter to the UFC without necessarily committing the UFC to the fighter), you can always decide to call it quits and go get a job. No one is making these guys fight. At the same time, they have every right to try and renegotiate if they’re unhappy with the deal they signed. Eventually either they’ll figure out that they need the UFC, or the UFC will decide that it needs them. I can see it going either way, but I can’t see either side as a victim.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.